24: Deadline (24 Series)

by James Swallow

  Ziminova stood by the doorway, hesitating. She still had her gun drawn. Jack met her gaze, his finger touching the trigger of the pistol he held. “It’s up to you how this goes from here,” he told her.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I follow my orders,” she said. “But be clear, Bauer. This is only a stay of execution. A temporary reprieve. You have killed Russians. Important men. My people will want that blood cost to be paid in kind.” Then, before he could find an answer, she slipped away into the basement corridor and was gone.

  Stephen took a trembling breath and blew it out. “I think … I think this is the worst day of my life.”

  “You get used to them,” said Jack, with a grim nod.

  24

  “Here.” Laurel looked up to see the FBI agent offering her a steaming plastic cup of coffee.

  She took it with a grateful smile. “Thanks. Agent Kilner, right?”

  He nodded and sat down next to her on the low concrete wall outside the Apache Motel. “How are you doing?”

  Laurel almost broke into laughter at the banality of the question. “I don’t have anything to measure this against,” she offered. “I thought I had it bad before, but…” Laurel gestured at the buildings around them, taking in the town. “Hell. Frying pan and fire, I reckon.”

  In the hours that followed the shoot-out at the old mega-mart building, a small army of lawmen had descended on the town of Deadline, largely on the summons of Kilner and his fellow agents. State troopers, officers from the US Marshal service and more people in FBI visibility jackets had arrived, and now it looked like they were in the process of dismantling the whole rotten place.

  “You’re safe,” Kilner assured her. “It looks like whoever was left of the Night Rangers MC got on their bikes and fled south when things started falling apart. They had to know their little empire here was going to get blown open.” He nodded in the direction of the former army base and the smoke still rising from its fire-damaged ruins. “Literally, in this case, thanks to Bauer.”

  Laurel sipped the coffee, thinking about the intense, steady gaze of the man who had saved her life just a short distance from where they now sat. “He took a powerful dislike to those scumbags. I know how he felt.”

  “Did you spend time with him?”

  “Some.” She nodded. “Chase too.” Laurel felt a stab of grief at the thought of the younger man, who had taken a bullet meant for her. She looked away, wiping her eyes. “Why did they come here? I mean, they didn’t have to. They could have stayed out of it.”

  Kilner shook his head. “Bauer … Edmunds … Neither were the kind of men to let injustice slip past them.”

  “What’s gonna happen to Chase … His body, I mean?”

  “It’ll go back to his family, I guess. Our office in San Diego tracked them down … They didn’t even know he was still alive.”

  Laurel nodded again. “When that happens, I’d like to talk to them. Tell them what he did for me.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What about Jack? That woman, do you know where she took him?”

  He shook his head. “Truth is, there’s a lot of people who wanted Jack Bauer dead.”

  “Like your boss?”

  Kilner’s lips thinned. “He’s going to pay for his mistakes, you can count on it. Me, Dell and Markinson, we’ve all made statements about Hadley’s actions. He’ll never carry a badge again. He’s looking at some serious jail time.” Kilner fell silent for a moment. “Bauer deserved better than what he got. Edmunds too. They both put their lives on the line for this country a dozen times over.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Laurel ventured, “but I know they put them on the line for me. And all the other folks those bikers lied to.”

  “About that.” Kilner looked at her. “Laurel, there’s a lot of people here who are scared and they’re reluctant to talk to law enforcement. But this is a big deal. We’ve stumbled on the hub of a major methamphetamine ring based in Deadline, along with all the crimes of fraud, kidnapping, human trafficking and everything else connected to it.”

  “Cherry has been around longest, I think,” she said. “Talk to her.”

  “Maybe you could be there when I do that,” he prompted. “Show her and the others they can trust the cops. Everyone in this town is a witness to what’s been going on here, but we can’t do anything unless they’re willing to go on the record.”

  Laurel frowned. “With all due respect, I’m betting that no one hereabouts has ever had the law give a damn about them, Agent Kilner. No cops came looking before. And is this even your jurisdiction?”

  “That’s not important,” he said. “What matters is that we help these people now.”

  For a long minute, Laurel said nothing, staring blankly ahead of her. In the light of day, Deadline looked every inch the worn-out, tumbledown ghetto. It was a vampire town, she realized, something that should have been dead a long time ago, kept alive by feeding off the lives of others. Somebody needed to put a stake through its heart.

  Is that me? She wanted to run. That was the easiest thing to do, the most familiar of her choices. That was how she had dealt with bullies in high school, uncaring foster parents and abusive boyfriends. Just run. Because taking a stand required courage that Laurel had never dared to reach for, always afraid that she would look for it and find nothing there.

  She thought about Jack and Chase. Both strangers to her, both people who owed her nothing, wanted nothing in return. And yet they had fought to keep her alive, stood up against the threats even though the price had been the highest of all.

  Can I live with myself if I don’t even try to do the same? The question echoed through her thoughts.

  At length, Laurel drained the last of the coffee and tossed the cup away. “You should let me do the talking first,” she told him. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said with a smile. “And thank you.”

  Laurel shook her head. “I’m just paying someone back, is all.”

  * * *

  Hadley knew something was wrong when the helicopter that had been sent to take him back to division went off course, and the flight crew refused to answer any of his questions.

  Now he was in a twenty-by-twenty room with bare concrete walls, looking at himself sitting in a metal chair before a metal table, his reflection staring back at him from a smoke-gray mirrored window. His expression was empty, his gaze hollow and defeated. Bright stainless steel handcuffs held his wrists to a ring bolted to the top of the table. There was no clock in the room, nothing to mark the passage of time. They had taken his watch, his belt and shoelaces, everything in his pockets. Thomas Hadley had never been a prisoner before, and he didn’t like the feeling.

  Across the room, a door opened and two people entered. One was a Hispanic woman with an unreadable expression, and the other was a taller man with tawny skin. Hadley pegged him as Middle Eastern but he couldn’t be certain. Both were dressed in the same kind of nondescript jacket-trouser outfits that were practically a uniform for government operatives.

  He ventured a guess. “You’re not with the bureau.”

  The woman sat in another chair opposite Hadley and put a leather folder down in front of her. The man stood near the door, arms folded across his chest. “FBI Special Agent Thomas Hadley,” said the woman. “Out of the New York field office. You’ve gone way off-book, Agent. There are going to be consequences.”

  “I want to talk to my supervisor,” Hadley replied. “Mike Dwyer.”

  “No,” offered the man. “You talk to us.”

  “About Jack Bauer,” added the woman. “The way I understand it, you wrote yourself a blank check to tear up the place looking for him. An armed high-speed pursuit through Hell’s Kitchen. Appropriation of a federal agency airplane. Interfering with investigations on a local and state level, collusion with known criminal elements, not to mention actions that caused reckless endangerment of other agents and civilians.”

  Hadley shifted i
n his seat, feeling his temper rise. “Who are you people? CIA? Homeland Security? NSA?” He shook his head. “I took the initiative. Bauer is a very dangerous man and an exceptional target. If I had to work outside the lines to bring him in and—”

  “Outside the lines,” repeated the woman, with a sarcastic smirk. “That’s cute.”

  “But you didn’t bring him in, did you?” snapped the man. “According to eyewitness reports, both Bauer and his associate were shot dead. And it has to be said, your conduct didn’t exactly square with the intent of making a live capture.”

  The woman eyed him. “Did you want payback for Jason Pillar’s murder? You blame Bauer for everything that led up to that? Did you let yourself get fixated on him?”

  Hadley realized they were deliberately trying to provoke him, and he looked away. “Bauer is dead. What does it matter now?”

  “Where’s the body?” said the man.

  “I don’t know. The shooter took it. The assassin.” He gestured at the air. “She uses the alias ‘Mandy.’”

  “We know her.” The woman glanced at her partner. “We also know that without a corpse, we don’t have proof-positive that Jack Bauer was actually killed.”

  “He’s been dead before,” offered the man. “Doesn’t seem to stick with him, though.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “Uh-huh.” The woman opened the folder to reveal a tablet computer inside, and used it to bring up a picture. It was a shot of the face of a male corpse, lying on a mortuary table. “Tell me about this.”

  Hadley studied the image. “Powder burns and an entry wound on the throat. Looks like the guy put a gun under his chin and shot himself. Don’t know him.”

  “That’s Arthur Nemec. Senior technical manager for Atlantic Cellular Systems, Incorporated. He blew his own head off at dawn today. Left a suicide note explaining that he had been coerced into working as an asset for agents of the Russian government. Forced to run covert cell traces through the telephone network. You want to guess who they asked him to find?”

  Hadley licked his lips. “Like I said, I don’t know him.”

  She tapped the tablet’s screen, flicking past more pictures. These were shots of a crime scene, in a basement somewhere. Three more dead men, each starkly illuminated by the light of a camera flash, scrolled past. “These are a little fresher,” she noted. “Killed in the basement of Cedars-Sinai hospital out in LA earlier today. Initial analysis IDs them all as ex-Russian special forces.”

  “We also have unconfirmed reports that a CTU mobile unit was taken out at the same location,” said the man. “And apparently one of their bomb-disposal teams was deployed on the one-ten freeway shortly after. Know anything about that?”

  “CTU’s been shut down since yesterday,” Hadley insisted.

  “Well, they’re supposed to be,” corrected the woman. “They’re not exactly being cooperative right now.”

  “I’ve got no connection to this!” said the agent. “You people tell me who you are, right now! You have no right to hold me here!”

  She showed him two more images, ignoring his angry tone. Side by side, both shots appeared to have been pulled from grainy security camera footage. The first framed a woman Hadley had never seen before, who clearly knew where the camera was placed and was trying to avoid its gaze. When he didn’t respond, she presented the other image for his attention. In it was a man in an EMT jacket with a cap pulled down over his eyes and his collar raised. He couldn’t be certain, but it could have been Bauer.

  “Well?” prompted the man.

  Hadley’s jaw set and he glared across the room, past the two interrogators toward the mirrored window. “I’m not saying another word. Charge me if you want to, or let me out of this place!”

  The woman studied him for a moment, then abruptly gathered up the tablet. “This is a waste of time. He can’t tell us anything. We’re done here.”

  He watched them both exit the room, and the magnetic bolts of the door locked shut as they left him alone.

  In the silence that followed, Hadley could only hear the thudding of the blood in his ears, a sound like his life slowly collapsing around him.

  * * *

  The two interrogators walked into the observation room where their supervisor had been watching on the other side of the one-way glass, turning to see three armed men enter the holding space and gather up Hadley for transport. The man’s face vanished beneath a sense-deadening hood and he struggled as they walked him out.

  The woman turned her back on the window. “Useless,” she explained.

  Her supervisor, a balding man with gray at his temples, gave a curt nod. “It was worth a try. Toss him back to the bureau, let them clean up their mess. But keep a watch on what they’re doing, just in case.”

  “There was an update from New York,” said the other man. “An FBI team arrested one of Jack Bauer’s known associates this morning. A senior CTU technician named Chloe O’Brien. Did it right in front of her kid.”

  “Classy,” offered the woman. “I’ll get eyes on her questioning.”

  “Do that,” said the supervisor. “In the meantime, wheels are going to start turning. All of this proves that Jack Bauer is too big a risk to this country to be allowed to roam free. You both saw his file. He’s been exposed to too much. He has knowledge that could have devastating effects if it got into the hands of a foreign power. I’ll have a multi-agency warrant issued for his arrest and detention, and put every station we have around the world on notice. If he’s dead, we need to be one hundred percent certain of it. If not … we need to find him and isolate him. No matter where he goes.”

  “Those are the orders?” said the woman.

  She got a nod in return. “From the very top. The FBI clearly couldn’t handle a target of Bauer’s abilities … But we trained him. We helped make him what he is.” The supervisor walked away. “He’s the CIA’s problem now.”

  * * *

  “Hey,” said the crewman, walking across the deck toward him. “You Barrett?”

  “John Barrett,” he lied. “That’s me.”

  “You work your passage on ships before?”

  He nodded. “Couple of times.”

  “Good. We could use some experienced hands on this voyage.” The crewman looked up at the sky overhead. “Looks like it’s gonna be smooth sailing. We’re all squared away right now, so I guess I’ll show you your rack, if you want.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll be down in a while.”

  “Your call, man.” The crewman shrugged and walked away.

  Jack turned toward the stern rail and watched the Port of Los Angeles recede behind him, the flat and calm waters of the Pacific Ocean drawing the Veracruz toward the distant horizon.

  The MV Veracruz was a container ship flying a Dutch flag, and she was an aging boat, a Panamax just over nine hundred feet long, heavy with rust and the smell of engine oil. But she was also the kind of ship that didn’t draw attention, a plodder that made the run between Port Botany in Sydney across to LA and back, sketching the same course from California to New South Wales month after month, all year round.

  Jack didn’t want to look away from the sight across the ship’s churning white wake. He didn’t want to waste one second of this view of his country, because on some level, he was telling himself that it could quite possibly be the last time he would see it.

  Much of Jack’s turbulent life, from rebellious teenager to federal agent to international fugitive, had orbited around this stretch of the California coastline, and it seemed cruelly fitting that if he were to leave the land of his birth forever, it should be by this path.

  It would take days for them to reach Australia, and once he was there Jack would not be able to rest. Sydney was just the first port of call for him, the start of a new existence that would happen under the radar, away from prying eyes. He wasn’t sure where he would go next, but there were plenty of possibilities.

  Not for the
first time, Jack thought about returning to West Africa, back to the school in Sangala that his old friend Carl Benton had built. He wondered how that beleaguered country had fared in the years since the attempted military coup. Would they come looking for me there? he wondered. He frowned. That was a chance he didn’t want to take, and a danger he didn’t want to bring to their door.

  Instead, Jack considered all the places where he had the most enemies. South America, packed with drug cartels and militias fighting for power and control. Eastern Europe, where unsettled scores from past wars were still festering. As much as there were people out there who hated him, there were also people who owed him favors. And no sane person would think to look for him in those places, because to go there was to put his head back in the lion’s mouth. But then I’ve never played a safe bet in my life.

  He had the whole voyage to think it through. No one had seen him slip out of the city, and thanks to some help from Stephen, he had made it to the port unchallenged.

  Jack watched the coast grow distant and thought about Kim and her family. He had meant what he said in the basement storeroom. He held no malice toward his son-in-law for putting his wife and daughter’s welfare before Jack’s, and if the roles had been reversed, he would have done the same. The fact that the young doctor had endangered his own life to save Kim’s father, that despite himself he had pulled that trigger, these things spoke volumes about Stephen Wesley. Kim had chosen a good man in him, someone who had a different kind of strength to Jack’s, but a strength nonetheless. Jack had no fears for his daughter’s safety—she was resilient, just as her mother had been—and with someone like Stephen at her side, they would survive.

  The threat of the bomb had been very real, but Stephen had gotten to his wife in short order and after an anonymous call to CTU the device had been found and disarmed. That Kim and little Teri had come so close to death chilled Jack’s blood, and he knew that if he ever needed to remind himself why he had to stay away to keep them secure, he would recall that feeling.